Inconsistencies with "Opens" in Marketo Sales Insight | Community
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A
Anonymous
May 28, 2013
Solved

Inconsistencies with "Opens" in Marketo Sales Insight

  • May 28, 2013
  • 5 replies
  • 1686 views
We are currently seeing alot of inconsistencies for "Opens" of emails from Marketo Sales Insight.

1. Open not logged, but Click is
2. Testing an email, we open it, but it still shows up as not opened

Is anyone else seeing this weird behavior?
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Best answer by
Cristina, the "open" is registered by Marketo when a hidden image (probably a 1x1 clear png) is retrieved. This can only happen if the email is opened and images are displayed. When you are doing your internal testing are you opening the email and displaying images? Many email programs (Outlook and Gmail for example) block images by default, requiring you to click a "display/show images" button. Users who don't click that button will not be registered as opening the message, creating a false negative.

On the flip side, many users will turn on displaying images but will also use the preview pane in Outlook. This can create false positives where it shows the user opened the email when in fact they didn't really.

This is not a problem unique to Marketo and therefore email opens should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Having said all that, Marketo really should retroactively mark the open if a user clicks a link (since that obviously means they openeed it). I would have expected this to be the case, but it sounds like maybe not.

Hope that helps.

5 replies

A
Anonymous
May 28, 2013
Not all clicks necessarily require an "open" activity to be logged. Technically, someone can click on a link without "opening" and email, which requres the person to download the images in the email. As a result of this and after talking with a few others, I decided not to weigh opens into my campaign performance analyses. Clicks and form fill-outs are much more reliable metrics.

JK
A
Anonymous
May 28, 2013
Thanks Jessie. Unfortunately know if a prospect opened an email is important for my sales reps. Also, when I tested the email, I did open it and it still didn't log. That is not expected behavior.
A
Anonymous
Accepted solution
May 28, 2013
Cristina, the "open" is registered by Marketo when a hidden image (probably a 1x1 clear png) is retrieved. This can only happen if the email is opened and images are displayed. When you are doing your internal testing are you opening the email and displaying images? Many email programs (Outlook and Gmail for example) block images by default, requiring you to click a "display/show images" button. Users who don't click that button will not be registered as opening the message, creating a false negative.

On the flip side, many users will turn on displaying images but will also use the preview pane in Outlook. This can create false positives where it shows the user opened the email when in fact they didn't really.

This is not a problem unique to Marketo and therefore email opens should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Having said all that, Marketo really should retroactively mark the open if a user clicks a link (since that obviously means they openeed it). I would have expected this to be the case, but it sounds like maybe not.

Hope that helps.
A
Anonymous
May 28, 2013
Cristina, I'm also in a position where our sales staff relies on the open metric, but as Leif just mentioned, it's really not very accurate. I constantly am instructing to the sales staff not to mention anything regarding the open if they are on a call. People often deny ever opening the email, and it becomes an awkward conversation. Also, many of our sales reps have said the opens are not  indicative of a qualified lead. 

I'm not sure why your test opens aren't registering. Unless you are referring to the test emails that are sent via a preview, the opens should register. Perhaps this is a technical issue to be investigated further by a support engineer.

JK
A
Anonymous
May 28, 2013
Thanks all for the replies. Good to know that you guys are seeing the same things!
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